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Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

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Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#441

Post by galdosdi »

akira2501 wrote: post #192
galdosdi wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what financialization is for -- allowing homeowners to get "free" panels in exchange for paying back out of the savings over the years. Leasing panels is not uncommon. If these kinds of services don't exist in enough quantity, government subsidy could help.

> allowing homeowners They don't own the homes. They likely rent them. > government subsidy could help. More government money going directly over the people who most need it into the hands of the people who least need it. The property owner class redirects another crisis to their benefit.

The landlord could put panels on it, and pass the lease fee on, and advertise the house as, eg "$1000 a month plus $100 FLAT FEE ELECTRICAL! You never pay more than $100 per month for electric AND IT'S STEPS AWAY FROM EVERYTHING" or some such

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#442

Post by galdosdi »

jncfhnb wrote: post #184
galdosdi wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another poster pointed out that the cost of moving lines underground is really only a one time fee of about $5 per person per month for about 10 years. This does not seem too expensive for a permanent increase in reliability. One thing I will miss about living in Manhattan is the power never ever went out, at least not due to the distribution grid. And, it's a minor, minor thing, but as a bonus, having lines out of s…

Per person per month for 10 years is a ridiculous unit to choose. Europe benefits from being very dense. The US grid is way more spread out. Undergrounding costs are around $1M per mile. The US has millions of miles of lines.

> ridiculous unit to choose.

...but... that's like, uh, how projects like this actually get financed. On a per customer (which I know is distinct from per person) and per monthly bill basis, capitalized and amortized. Why would I use a lump sum unit when that's not how it's going to be paid for, or a per distance unit when pieces of dirt don't pay money, people do?

Pal, this is just how basic corporate accounting works, something you might like to look into if you are interested in opining on what units are best for comparing capital costs.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#443

Post by galdosdi »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #206
galdosdi wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's free if you spend it on a durable asset that is as or more valuable than the cash was, which can often be true of infrastructure. Your balance sheet goes up not down after the spend then.

There are vanishingly few examples of infrastructure spending that don't turn into massive, wasteful boondoggles; perhaps the Interstate Highway system. The national railroad system a century prior and even the Internet were nearly entirely built with private funds.

I wouldn't say vanishingly few. Seems like the vast majority of infrastructure built before some certain point in the mid-to-late 20th century was cheap and easily worth it (and we built a TON of it all the time) and it's only since then there's been increasing issues. I don't think it's about infrastructure, there's something else causing the cost overruns and we should figure out what it is.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#444

Post by galdosdi »

massysett wrote: post #258
gunapologist99 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are vanishingly few examples of infrastructure spending that don't turn into massive, wasteful boondoggles; perhaps the Interstate Highway system. The national railroad system a century prior and even the Internet were nearly entirely built with private funds.

Railroads got massive subsidies in at least two forms: huge land grants, and the power of the U.S. Army to wage war on the native peoples who otherwise would have stood in their way.

The land grant thing is sort of weird though. Hard to think of it as that big of a subsidy when the land was so so low in value prior to the railroad and the railroad's construction is what made the adjoining land so valuable. I wouldn't call it a subsidy at all -- but rather an investment that turned nearly worthless land into much more valuable land and attracted much more investment dwarfing the original "subsidy"

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#445

Post by selimthegrim »

ddoolin wrote: post #369
smelendez wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ida in New Orleans was a real mess and exposed a lot of issues in the city besides electricity. Because power was out for so long, everyone threw out a ton of food, but there was no trash pickup in some cases for weeks because of staffing shortages and contract disputes, so there was stinky trash and huge swarms of bright blue flies everywhere. At one point, the mayor suggested people could drive their own trash to t…

I am from central Louisiana (although I mostly have lived outside the state) and have been considering moving to NOLA and this is the kind of thing that gives me pause. Thanks for sharing.

Things have changed since. I wouldn’t rule it out.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#446

Post by selimthegrim »

throwup238 wrote: post #130
tzs wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't imagine the city is remotely prepared for (god forbid, and idk how likely it is that far inland anyway) a cat 4 or 5. In the past they've never had a cat 5. The last cat 5 was Carla in 1961. The last cat 3 was Alicia in 1983. The last cat 2 was Alicia in 2008 (although that was actually east of Houston and just hit Houston with its weaker winds). Climate change should make such storms more likely to form, b…

There were a lot of behavioral adaptations that don't seem as practical now because the extremes are so much hotter and more frequent. Porch sitting, the siesta, outdoor sleeping on porches and roofs, etc. were all ways to mitigate the heat. Wealthier people built big houses with lots of thermal mass and tall ceilings while poorer people lived in shotgun houses with aligned doors and porches that created constant air…

Also Formosan termites put paid to transoms.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#447

Post by mrguyorama »

tstrimple wrote: post #329
Symbiote wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about Amsterdam, or London (outer London if you want a lower density).

There always seems to be an excuse as to why America is exceptional and things accomplished routinely in other countries couldn't possibly work here. It's true to a degree. They absolutely cannot work here. But that's more about our political dysfunction than anything meaningful about our geographical situations.

Imagine if we made these arguments in the past:

"No we can't have a transcontinental railroad because the US is gigantic and mostly empty" (which is the entire reason we wanted a damn railroad across the US!)

"No we can't build an interstate transport system because the US is mostly empty"

"No we can't dam nearly every mid sized river in the country because the US is too spread out"

It's just fundamentally wrong on all levels. We can build a Burger King in the middle east in a week, we can build a system of levees around a swampland that is actively under the waterline that, when they failed due to design deficiencies, we decided to build even stronger ones.

We fucking COULD do massive amounts of high speed rail criscrossing the country and connecting all of us for reasonable prices without even taking your shoes off. It would be even easier if we just stop it at the Californian border

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#448

Post by mock-possum »

jmyeet wrote: post #202

Note: this isn't a power grid issue. Texas is famously not connected to the national grid [1]. This is an issue of downed power lines. An obvious question is: why doesn't Houston have underground power? It turns out that Houston really shouldn't exist. It's built on a swamp. It's also hot so heat dissipation is an issue. So it's expensive [2]. Houston is also famous for its lack of zoning [3]. Combine this with a lot…

One of humanity’s greatest accomplishments is putting huge cities in spots where we really have no business living - I mean just look at Vegas. The world itself is actively discouraging us from setting up shop there, but humans are like naaaahhhhh just slap some concrete over it, it’ll be fine.

Nobody really likes to think about the consequences of building in spaces where it’s not well-suited to human habitation at that scale - or about who too-commonly pays the price.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#449

Post by jncfhnb »

galdosdi wrote: post #442
jncfhnb wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per person per month for 10 years is a ridiculous unit to choose. Europe benefits from being very dense. The US grid is way more spread out. Undergrounding costs are around $1M per mile. The US has millions of miles of lines.

> ridiculous unit to choose. ...but... that's like, uh, how projects like this actually get financed. On a per customer (which I know is distinct from per person) and per monthly bill basis, capitalized and amortized. Why would I use a lump sum unit when that's not how it's going to be paid for, or a per distance unit when pieces of dirt don't pay money, people do? Pal, this is just how basic corporate accounting wor…

I already responded to that two days ago in adjacent replies.

You’re also completely wrong. Utilities do not get to pass on costs to specific customers. It is, at best, just a compelling point with regulators to build it into the rate case for capital spending.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#450

Post by shiroiushi »

snowpid wrote: post #434
shiroiushi wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe doesn't have earthquakes. (Neither does Houston, but the previous comment did mention it as an issue in general.)

Europe does regularly earth quakes in Italy. Maybe Turkey , Greece, Balkan counties, too.

True, I forgot about the earthquake in Italy that resulted in a bunch of seismologists being jailed and prosecuted for not predicting it.

Still, it seems like those parts of Europe (outside of Turkey, which isn't really in Europe) don't have large earthquakes, otherwise all those ancient buildings like the Coliseum and Parthenon would have completely collapsed by now.

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